Deliberations start in stepdad's slaying

Teen defendant's tears too late, prosecutor says

SAN DIEGO COURTS 
In a dramatic closing argument yesterday morning, a prosecutor pointed at a teenager accused of killing her stepfather and called her a murderer as she wept in court.

In the afternoon, a jury began deliberating the case against 19-year-old Brae Hansen, whose “tears and her expression” in court were too late, Deputy District Attorney George Bennett said.

Hansen and her brother, Nathaniel Gann, 20, are being tried in the same courtroom with separate juries in the shooting death of their stepfather, Timothy MacNeil, in 2007.

The siblings have been charged with murder and a special-circumstance allegation of lying in wait. If convicted, they could be sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Bennett said the pair tried to make it look as though MacNeil, a 63-year-old attorney, was killed July 19 during a robbery at his home in Rolando. Gann, who had been living in Arizona at the time of the killing, is accused of firing a fatal shot to the back of MacNeil's head.

Hansen told police detectives and mentioned in letters that she “tried to stop” her brother from killing MacNeil, Britt said.

He said Gann threatened Hansen with a gun when she tried to stop the plan.

In his statement to jurors, Britt conceded that Hansen participated early in the killing plot by making a gun accessible and making a copy of a key to access the house for her brother to use in the slaying.

He said his client did not confess the plot to police early in the investigation because she was conflicted.

“She feared her brother and was afraid of losing him” at the same time, Britt said.

Bennett disputed Britt's story and told the panel that if Hansen truly wanted to withdraw from the crime, “she could have called somebody” before anything happened and asked for help.

“She didn't want to stop (the murder). She just wanted somebody else to pull the trigger,” Bennett said.

A previous jury who heard Gann's case voted 7-5 in favor of guilt and a judge declared a mistrial. This is the first trial for Hansen.